Bengaluru/New Delhi: Senior Congress leader B K Hariprasad on Thursday mocked BJP president Amit Shah for his swine flu condition, triggering a tsunami of angry reactions from the BJP which hit back saying flu is curable but “mental illness” of leaders of the opposition party is difficult to treat.
The Congress sought to distance itself from its Rajya Sabha MP Hariprasad, who in Bengaluru said Shah contracted swine flu since his party made an alleged bid to destabilise the Congress-JDS government in Karnataka, reports PTI. Congress spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi said the party could never think of wishing illness to any BJP leader, while drawing attention to its president Rahul Gandhi’s wishes for good health to Union minister Arun Jaitley, who is in the US for health check-up.
Speaking at a Congress protest in Bengaluru against the alleged attempt by the BJP to dislodge the Congress-JDS government in Karnataka by luring the ruling coalition MLAs, Hariprasad in Kannada said,”As a few legislators have already come back, Amit Shah is shaken and has got fever. It is not a normal fever. It is swine flu.”
He added that “You should know that if you try to destabilise the Karnataka government, not just swine flu, you will get vomiting and dysentery also.” Shah was on Wednesday admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Delhi for swine flu treatment.
Union ministers, BJP leaders in the state and the national capital slammed Hariprasad and used his comments to attack the opposition party and demanded that it sack him and tender a public apology. “The kind of ugly and indecent comments Congress MP B K Hariprasad have made about BJP president Amit Shah’s health show the standards of the Congress. Flu is curable but it is difficult to cure Congress leaders’ mental illness,” Union minister Piyush Goyal said. Apart from Goyal several union ministers, including Rajyavardhan Rathore, Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, reacted sharply.
